Over 2 years ago, I was reading among my favored e-mail e-newsletters when I scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and saw the beehiiv logo for the first time. I clicked it and promptly began tearing up Can You Sell on Beehiiv.
I wasn’t sure why I really felt so psychological.
Being a permanent designer is tough. I’m frequently obtaining pitched various devices and services that do not appear to be worth my time.
I think I was emotional because I spent the last six months trying out different e-mail and newsletter platforms to help develop my newsletter. And to be fair, there are some wonderful options for composing e-newsletters. Yet I couldn’t locate one that made me give a certain “yes”.
The concern with many existing newsletter platforms is that they do not really feel creator-centered. I desire a newsletter system that lets me completely customize my newsletter designs, makes it incredibly simple to write and send e-mails, and offers me tools that aid me evaluate metrics and obtain even more customers.
I assume I have actually lastly found the ideal tool.
However, I know beehiiv may not be for every person. So let’s dive deep and see if it’s actually best for you.
What is beehiiv?
beehiiv is an all-in-one platform for newsletters. It’s a creator-friendly newsletter system that makes it simple to style, compose, send, advertise, monetize, and track the ROI of your newsletter.
Created by previous employees at the popular e-newsletter company Morning Brew, beehiiv aims to assist developers launch and monetize their own newsletter– taking lots of growth concepts from taking Morning Brew to over 4M clients.
In this write-up, I’m mosting likely to describe my personal experience with beehiiv, the things I enjoy (and hate) concerning it, all of it’s features, and why I made a decision to ultimately go with it as my e-newsletter platform of selection.
My personal experience with beehiiv
A few months ago, I mistakenly stumbled across beehiiv. The funny story is that I have actually been on the lookout for a contemporary e-newsletter platform for rather time currently. I have actually procrastinated hard when it concerned ultimately introducing my newsletter.
Initially, I tried Mailchimp. Then, a couple of various other indie systems. Then, Substack. And ultimately, I wound up using beehiiv.
I’m sure many newsletter developers look up to preferred newsletters with countless customers– I understand I do. The Morning Brew newsletter is one I appreciated a great deal. They have terrific material, tons of customers, and a brilliant referral program that enables them to get back at more clients.
So, I went on a search to identify how these large newsletters set up their logistics. What system do they utilize? How do they track the ROI of their newsletters? How do they get even more customers? How do they create an e-newsletter style that remains on-brand?
When I found beehiiv for the very first time, it seemed to address every one of my concerns. I believed to myself, “damn the people that built this tool actually comprehend e-newsletter creation and development.” I examined who these designers of beehiiv were.
So I mosted likely to LinkedIn, and saw that the co-founders were some of the very first marketing and growth staff members at Morning Brew– my mind blew up.
I knew this was going to be a various e-newsletter platform. One that’s concentrated on developer growth.
Because, any kind of creator knows, you need development to be able to make a living off of a newsletter. And locating the appropriate newsletter stack (that scales) usually suggests using numerous different devices to aid attain one objective– one system for your newsletter, one platform to generate income from, and one system to establish referrals. It can obtain expensive.
So when I discovered beehiiv did every one of these things in one system, and it was totally free to begin using, it was a no-brainer to give it a try.
Who is beehiiv for?
beehiiv is for the lean material creator that wants a platform that allows them to send custom e-newsletters with or without requiring to have a site.
One of the most effective newsletters have the right tools to develop and scale their newsletters. beehiiv aims at offering you those devices.
If you’re an independent author, media firm, startup, or material maker, you must seriously thinking about checking out beehiiv. It’s entirely complimentary to get going and you only pay when you reach over 2,500 clients on your list.
If you actually end up needing to pay for beehiiv it’s most likely an excellent indication that people enjoy reviewing your stuff.
beehiiv vs Substack
You could be asking, “isn’t there currently a system for writers called Substack?”.
Yes, indeed there is. Substack is a great platform made use of by thousands of independent writers. With Substack you get your very own site and utilize the system as your all-in-one remedy for sending out e-mails (while creating an archive of previous problems).
What collections beehiiv apart is it’s commitment to development. beehiiv permits you do to all things Substack can do, with the benefit of better analytics, more layout flexibilty, and a referral program to encourage your existing clients to get words out.
beehiiv also provides you a web site comparable to Substack. But, if you have your very own site already, you can likewise utilize beehiiv’s sign-up installs (that’s what I use) to send your website customers straight to your beehiiv email checklist. On the very same token, you can incorporate beehiiv with a tool like Revue to enable individuals to register for your newsletter straight from Twitter.
This offers you the flexibility to leverage different marketing channels to obtain your e-newsletter out right into the world, making beehiiv a great Substack choice.
Just how to start using beehiiv email marketing software program.
Enroll in a free plan
The initial step is to sign up for a free plan. You can do this by clicking the “Start trial” switch on beehiiv’s web site.
The free plan will certainly permit you to have up to 2,500 clients, give you accessibility to internet site hosting, a newsletter CMS, advancement personalization, analytics, outside embed types, and much more. It’s a very generous offering for those simply beginning (or for those seeking a new platform to move to).
Onboarding Can You Sell on Beehiiv
After developing an account, you’ll go through an onboarding process that will ask things like, “is this your very first newsletter?”, “what other platforms have you made use of?”, “do you have any paying customers?”, and extra.
You’ll then develop a name and URL for your newsletter’s web site. On the free plan, your e-newsletter will certainly reside on a beehiiv subdomain. So if your newsletter is called “Cooking Cakes,” your internet site URL could be something like “baking-cakes. beehiiv.com”.
Throughout the onboarding procedure, you’ll additionally choose your brand name design and colors to make certain your newsletter template looks right.
Browsing your control panel
When you reach your primary dashboard, you’ll see every one of your analytics and settings.
You will certainly have outlined info on the number of sign-ups you’re obtaining and where.
In the sidebar, you’ll see options for “Start composing,” “Blog posts,” “Target market,” “Grow,” “Monetize,” “Design,” and” Assess.” And at the really lower you’ll see the settings alternative.
Dashboard is your main control center (screenshot over), Begin creating is where you produce and publish e-newsletters, Articles is where you can see all of your previous newsletter versions, Audience is where you can view who your subscribers are (and break them down right into segments), Expand is where you have access to a referral program (and growth tutorials) and boosts to run advertisements, Monetize is where you can access the beehiiv ad network and monetize your newsletter with advertisements, Style is where you develop your newsletter landing page and blog post template, Evaluate is where you can see all your analytics, and Settings is where you can handle every one of your admin things.
Composing your newsletter
beehiiv makes it easy to start composing, with little to no friction. If you’re simply starting out, and have a concept you want to cover, I recommend simply mosting likely to the “Compose” section in the navbar and clicking “Beginning composing”.
You can modify your template and designing later– concentrate on the web content initially.
As you can see, beehiiv’s editor supplies a tidy and straightforward interface for writing.
When you start composing, you can enhance headings, add web links, and design your web content how you like.
beehiiv provides you tons of options for various sorts of web content like videos, links, pictures, and more.
The team at beehiiv is likewise frequently launching item feature and updates so I make certain there will certainly be a whole lot extra material features depending on when you read this.
Optimizing your setups and templates
Once you have a newsletter that prepares to send, it’s time to develop your e-mail template and readjust some setups.
Right here, you can upgrade the name of your e-newsletter, offer it a summary, include your logo design, turn on or off a welcome e-mail to first time clients, and extra.
Next, you can head over to the “Email Template” tab to make your layout.
You can modify background shades, borders, spacing, typefaces, picture layouts, and much more. I’m not going to go through ever before single point you can optimize with your email template due to the fact that it’s a lot. Just experiment with the platform free of charge and see it for yourself!
Vital beehiiv features
beehiiv has tons of remarkable features that make it a fantastic publishing platform for any type of e-newsletter designer.
Below are a few of the important features you can locate with beehiiv:.
E-newsletter builder
At its core, beehiiv is an e-newsletter posting system. It makes it incredibly easy to compose and send emails. I mentioned above a few of the things you can do with your settings and email style so I’ll spare you some extra analysis.
Things to keep in mind with beehiiv’s e-newsletter builder is that it has a really modern-day and minimalistic feeling. It’s most definitely one of the far better email editors I’ve ever before written in.
Web site hosting
When you develop a beehiiv e-newsletter, all of your e-newsletters (if you want) survive an internet site. Consider it as an internet site for your e-newsletter that’s a home to all of your previous issues of your e-newsletter, and an area where people can subscribe to your newsletter.
If you know with Substack, it’s basically similar to that.
All plans, including the totally free one, provide you a web site. Nevertheless, the free plan locations your web site on a beehiiv subdomain so if you intend to add a personalized domain name to eliminate all the beehiiv branding you’ll require to update to a paid plan.
Subscribe forms
Obtaining customers is essential. After all, that’s why you have an e-newsletter right?
With beehiiv, people can subscribe to your e-newsletter right from your beehiiv website or with embed types.
If you already have an internet site, and desire people to subscribe to your e-newsletter from your existing website, you’ll have to use an embed type. This is what I utilize on this website (you can see the sign-up embed on the right-hand man column of this blog post if you scroll up).
With embed forms, you have 3 various alternatives– a complete width, a repaired width, and a slim embed. I personally make use of the slim installed.
You can find the code fragment for these embeds in the “Subscribe Kinds” tab in your settings.
There’s likewise a choice for attribution tracking if you wish to forward UTM criteria for tracking purposes– rather cool.
Nevertheless, there are a few features I wish beehiiv had when it pertained to subscribe features. I’m sure the team is servicing updates for these, yet I stated a few worries I had in the benefits and drawbacks section listed below.
Referral program
Among the amazing things concerning beehiiv, that I have yet to see in any other e-newsletter system, is a service for developing a referral program.
You can encourage existing customers on your listing to forward your emails to buddies and coworkers and if they get other people to sign up for your checklist, you can reward them. These rewards can be in whatever type you want. I have actually seem numerous e-newsletter business give benefits in the form of merch and stickers.
This can seriously turn your customers right into a word of mouth development engine for your newsletter– providing you an additional avenue for expanding your e-mail list.
Nevertheless, to get accessibility to the referral program feature, you’ll have to upgrade to a much more premium plan. I’ll look at all the plans later in this article.
Costs memberships
They state all you need to make a living online is 1,000 true followers. Registration profits is certainly a beast of its own. If you’re looking for a platform to monetize your newsletter, this is it.
With beehiiv, you can produce “costs” concerns of your e-newsletter that are only sent to paying subscribers. This can be really profitable depending on what your e-newsletter needs to use. For instance, Trends.co is a preferred costs e-newsletter that generates millions in earnings a year simply by having pay-only newsletter web content.
Information analytics
Among the things I love about beehiiv is exactly how tidy and easy the analytics are. You obtain real-time day on how your newsletter is doing, with open/click prices and subscriber count Can You Sell on Beehiiv.
You obtain accessibility to all the metrics you need to obtain a bird-eye sight on exactly how your e-newsletter is actually doing. Logging right into your control panel and seeing that subscriber count increase is definitely a dopamine booster.
beehiiv pricing plans
beehiiv supplies four various pricing plans. You can check them out listed below.
The (cost-free) Launch plan offers you whatever you need to get started and expand your newsletter (approximately 2,500 subscribers).
The Scale plan ($ 49/month) provides you everything in the Launch plan with the addition the ad network, referral program, personalized domain name, surveys, and accessibility to costs memberships. This is the plan I get on.
The Max plan ($ 109/month) gives you whatever in the Grow plan with addition of top priority assistance and getting rid of the beehiiv branding.
Every one of these plans are quite generous in my viewpoint.
As an example, if you have 100,000 clients you will pay around $329 each month. Rather than some competitors, like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), that would certainly bill $679 each month for the exact same amount– making beehiiv a great Kit alternative for several individuals.
I’m unsure exactly how the device economics work on this, but beehiiv is definitely cheaper (presently) than what it can be.
beehiiv benefits and drawbacks
Certainly, with every system, it has its pros and cons. Here are several of the advantages and disadvantages I’ve directly experienced while utilizing beehiiv:
Pros of using beehiiv
Right here are some of the pros of using beehiiv as your e-newsletter platform of selection:
Easy to establish and begin sending newsletters totally free.
Clean and contemporary customer analytics.
Lots of versatility with email designs.
Referral program feature.
Web site hosting.
Create premium alternatives to monetize.
Polls.
To be truthful, I haven’t seen one more newsletter system that has actually been able to package every one of these features with each other so well.
But obviously, I do not wish to be prejudiced so I’m going to point out some cons.
Cons of using beehiiv
Below are some of the disadvantages I’ve discovered while using beehiiv:.
Limitations around incorporating Webflow and beehiiv.
Limitations around including customized font styles.
I utilize Webflow as my internet site structure system of choice (I graduated from WordPress and Squarespace a long period of time ago). I’m not mosting likely to go in too much information why I enjoy Webflow a lot yet you can read my Webflow evaluation if you would love to learn more.
Now, there really is no other method I can integrate beehiiv with my Webflow web site aside from utilizing an iframe embed. I personally don’t such as using iframe’s because they have a tendency to decrease my website a bit. Each time a page on my site (with a beehiiv embed) tons, the sign-up embed is the last thing to load on the page. It’s really obvious when you get on a slow-moving web link. However I can navigate that.
The primary gripe I have is that I can’t utilize a normal Webflow kind (which I enjoy making use of). There are methods around this by using a tool like Zapier but that would simply add additional costs that I don’t require. To be sincere, this is more of a Webflow disadvantage over a beehiiv con yet I assumed I would certainly mention it.
Besides that, I still think the pros far exceed the cons below. I’m likewise confident that Webflow will ultimately create a much better way to incorporate with beehiiv.
Final Thought
Overall, beehiiv is an excellent solution for any person wanting to study the globe of e-mail marketing and e-newsletters.
The capability of this e-newsletter system far outweighs several that are presently on the market. And with a generous free plan, you truly have nothing to lose for trying it.
The paid plans are likewise relatively inexpensive wherefore they are. Paying just $329/month to have 100,000 customers on your listing is unprecedented. If you were to have a newsletter with 100k customers, and all of these features beehiiv has, it can cost you well right into the thousands monthly.
Anyways, I don’t create evaluation posts frequently. I only do when I actually make use of the tool myself and would recommend it to a close friend.
I wish you located some quality on whether beehiiv is a good system for you.